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Glastonbury 2010: Saturday - Pyramid Roundup

The shortest man (5ft1in) ever to have enjoyed a UK Number 1, if you believe Wikipedia, Tinchy Stryder takes to the Pyramid Stage, looking overheated in his hoodie and surrounded by four blow-up dummies bearing the legend "Star In The Hood". His grime-flavoured pop of the bounce-along variety proves an absolute winner. Watch him move up in the bill in years to come.

The Lightning Seeds arrive to party like it's 1992, replete with string quartet and singer Ian Broudie's teenage son Riley on guitar. Faced with a crowd wilting in the heat, their sunshine pop fails to totally connect, until they play their trump card: an acoustic, stupendously singalong Three Lions.

The last time Jackson Browne played here was in 1982. "It was muddy," notes the Californian troubadour dryly. Performing to a relatively sparse gathering, he comes over like the Ghost Of Glastonbury Past, the blue skies reflected in his mirror shades, as he provides a soothing balm for the reclining faithful with I'm Alive and Running On Empty. TD

'Can blue men sing the whites?' asked The Bonzo Dog Band,waggishly. Frankly, with Pilton perhaps hotter than the Mississippi Delta, the frying masses in front of the Pyramid Stage just want to be entertained. Thankfully, Seasick Steve doesn't disappoint - grizzled-bluesman persona intact, and full of yarns about life lived the hard way. Any man who can rock a diddley bow (a 2x4 with a single string and an old can nailed to it) and two hubcaps attached to a broom handle deserves all the adulation the crowd shower upon Seasick Steve. Plus, with more than 1,000 people treated for sunstroke so far this weekend, Burning Up proves the most aptly named song of the festival.
From one blue-eyed bluesman to another remarkably pasty one: Jack White's other, other band The Dead Weather may be noisy as hell and equipped with a hearseload of gothy, black-clad attitude, but they could do with a few more actual tunes buried within the swampy blues murk. CC

Surprisingly, hyper-international Shakira seems a bit all over the place - late onstage after her intro music peters out, then off in the wings for a couple of unexplained minutes towards the end. But in between -- though maybe ill? -- she wiggles and bounces through all-action Latino-Arabic-Afro-Eurodisco smashes Whenever, Wherever and Underneath Your Clothes (which sounds a bit Nashville actually), plus her jerky indie-ish xx co-write Islands, to an apt crescendo with Hips Don't Lie, Wyclef Jean special-guesting. And get this -- she says she'll be watching England v Germany in a London East End pub...

No doubts about Scissor Sisters. Optimum campery via the non-stop dirty-dancing joys of Take Your Mama, Running Out and Comfortably Numb, plus they've got the guts to pitch in half a dozen songs from their upcoming album Night Work. Tens of thousands discover they can sing falsetto and Ana Matronic declares her love for the whole place by pledging herself not to the American flag but to the gay array flying over Glastonbury "and the altered states they represent" while Shears celebrates the sixth anniversary of plighting his troth in Lost Vagueness. Then Kylie Minogue strides on in her glittery thigh boots to join in a new Sisters song, Any Which Way, every move rehearsed to a hair... and finishes us all off, frankly. PS

Glastonbury 2010: Saturday Pyramid Stage: Muse headline with the Edge.

Photos: Muse, Scissor Sisters, Shakira, The Lightning Seeds

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2:21 PM | 27/06/2010